That Night
by redex
Summary: HiiragiAkane. It was the first night, officially, when everything clicked. [oneshot]


I wanted to work on my male charectorization. It is pretty well known that there are two versions of charectors: the fanon and the canon. Mostly because girls have a hard time writing guys in a manly way. Not that their fics are much less for it, but I wanted to challenge myself to get it right. I'm happy with this one, I think it's as male as I can make it at this point in time.

* * *

**That Night **_by _**Redex**

* * *

_I can feel it coming in the air tonight..._ - Phil Collins

It was a form of beauty, this was. The bright overhead lights, making the court like the only bright spot in the entire area, making the ground outside the fence black and unseeable.

White lines on a burnt sienna pavement, rusting metal poles nearly invisible to the basketball player eye. The pole didn't matter; it was the basket that hung from it. The backboard that Tachibana so obviously ignored, the meshed nylon rope hanging from a circle of infinity. That was what they were aiming for, always.

But now they were just sitting on the sidelines, sipping water and milk, hunched over against the chain-link fence that bit into their backs through loose t-shirts. Tachibana looked like an idiot with his towel tied over his hair, like painted Dutch washer-women.

But his eyes crinkled upwards in a smile, and his tongue was sticking out as he traced the Kouzu skull and four-pointed star in the dirt with his finger.

It was then that I realized that I loved him.

I knew it, when I looked at him and he was the entire world. Quiet features that no one else would notice: eyebrows that jumped into frowns, hyphens of black on his face, perfect black hair, soft as the finest cashmere.

Did he know what he was _doing_ to me?

I figured I played casual well enough. How many years, swallowing my father's ambition? Well enough.

Not necessarily a good thing, Minefuji had told me once, giving me once of her appraising glances.

My legs are stretched out in front of me, but when he gets up silently to go, I tuck them in. He reaches down a hand to lift me up and I smile and take it. Despite the fact that my stomach lurches.

It's rough from basketball and push-ups and punches, but it's like the rest of him. And that's alright.

There's only a short ways before we part to our respective housing units.

"Have you ever thought about..." I start quietly, but can think of nothing.

"Yeah," he mumbles, in an unusually good mood.

And then his hand brushes mine, subtlety, just a rustling of jackets and sweaters, and a slight curling of his fingers as they press lightly against mine marking it as not an accident. He's looking at the sky with that same quiet smile filling his eyes.

I readjust the strap of my bag and look away, towards anything except him, not really seeing.

But I know I have the same smile on my lips.

When we pause before parting, a look of intense concentration passes behind his face and he reaches out towards my face. A schooled look of bewilderment came to me, but the heart beating in my chest so fast was not part of the act.

I gave him a few seconds. He brushes those same fingers over my hair and pluckes a leaf and holds it in front of my face. He is wearing a twisting, apologetic kind of look. I don't know what to do, so I look down. Can't look at him.

"Just a leaf," he says, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

"Yeah," I sigh, looking up and giving him a wry, hopeless sort of smile.

He looks over my shoulder and shoves his hands in his pockets.

"Lucky leaf."

I blink, thinking I must have misheard him.

"I mean, it would be much better off in your hair than on the ground, right? Anything would want to..."

He trails off and I recognize that smile. It looks like one of my own.

He scratches the back of his head with one hand and looks sheepish at being caught out with poetry.

The metaphors set my head on fire and melt a few things that I'm sure are important.

"I wouldn't mind if the leaf had stayed."

Not so good at poetry, me, for all my subtle lies. It comes out awkwardly with a lot of will put into getting it to leave my lips. I really don't know what to do.

"Ah."

But Tachibana brightens up immediately, like a child, really.

"Next time I find one I'll just leave it in your hair, then, fussy," he quips, the sad, quiet smile from before, gone. His hand reaches up and ruffles my hair, a familiar gesture, but lingering in an unfamiliar way on my neck. But he backs off, not pushing his luck.

Maybe a good thing, maybe not. I wasn't sure of anything and it would just be easier to run away.

"Night, then," he says cheerfully, turning and waving over his shoulder.

"See you tomorrow."

Familiar, this. Everything that wasn't familiar just became familiar and we seemed to make a natural progression from rivals to something else. I didn't know any of those lines that people mentioned, that jump from being friends to being... what? Lovers? Something like that. It was as if we were in love from the start and just hadn't figured it out yet.

We were figuring it out, one step at a time. One game, one day, one week, one month, one year, one moment at a time.

Collecting little memories like this one to cherish and look back on when kissing became familiar. When waking up to the smell of someone else's cologne and sweat became familiar.

If you wanted to be official, though, that was the night we agreed on was the start.

That was The Night.

* * *

Comment? Please? 


End file.
